


Paint it Vanta Black

by NotValeris (Valeris)



Category: Anish Kapoor - Fandom, Real Person Fiction, Stewart Semple - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Internet Famous, Kapoople, M/M, Painting, The World's Blackest Black, The World's Pinkest Pink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 18:57:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10542528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valeris/pseuds/NotValeris
Summary: Years after their feud over severally highly pigmented paints exploded all over the internet, Anish Kapoor and Stewart Semple meet again.  Will team Vanta Black and team Pink be able to make amends?





	

**Author's Note:**

> So it feels a little weird to be writing a fic about real people, but this paint feud has been reaching 'omg just make out already' heights for months, dare I say years. Someone had to do it. Someone had to answer the call, and give the world the Kapoople (That's the ship name. It's Kapoople. No one gets to argue. I wrote the only fic so I get to name it, and I'm naming it Kapoople.) story we've all been secretly writing in our heads. 
> 
> ...Unfortunately there is quite an age difference I found out, which makes me less pro-kissing. Have some vague romantic tension instead.

There had been a time in their lives when Anish and Stewart had fought over gallery openings, but that was years ago, when the feud had been new.  It made Stewart feel a little nostalgic to think of it-- the good old days of fighting on Instagram with bright Pink middle fingers and new paint colors.

That was before Anish had gone media-dark, of course.  No one worried that the two of them might show up to the same events anymore, because Anish didn’t show up to anything.  Those who still tried said that he seemed fine, sending back hand-drawn postcards turning down polite invitations to galas and parties from a dozen different artist retreats.  He never seemed to be in one place for long.

Stewart had never liked to think of himself as someone who sought conflict, but he had to admit that life had lost a little of its savor when Anish had hung up his spurs.  There had been something thrilling to the constant parry and thrust, something that he’d thought had driven them both, but in hindsight may have only driven _him._ Stewart had created dozens of colors, each brighter and more highly pigmented than the one before it, and Anish… Well. One of his last openings at the Lisson before he’d taken his leave of art had looked like someone had dismembered a cow and nailed its corpse to the wall.  It had looked battered and bloody, the writhing internal mass of surgery films and horror movies.

It disturbed Stewart to think of that as his last act, when he had always been so big and bright before.  His sculptures were like the massive discarded toys of some immense infant, a giant baby that had fallen from the sky and dropped its teething ring.  They had felt friendly and harmless, objects that invited you to explore.  

His last Lisson exhibit hadn’t felt much more mature, really, with its red waterfall of blood.  It felt oddly innocent still, a child’s concept of what would be shocking.  One reviewer had commented that the scene would have been fresher in an world that hadn’t already seen The Shining.

Stewart leaned more towards The Magic School Bus, himself.  With a bit more magnification they would have all been ready to experience life as red blood cells with Ms. Frizzle and the gang.

_Not that my stuff was much better back then,_ Stewart reflected, wincing as he recalled the painfully juvenile work he’d been churning out.  They looked like a middle schooler’s collage ‘art’ journal blown up huge, complete with spatterings of meaningful quotes that had all the punch of a Blink-182 song.

“Oh my god, ‘My loneliness is killing me’.” The painting came back to him with the intensity of a traumatic memory.  “It’s worse than Blink-182, that’s Britney Spears, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think it’s Britney Spears?” A confused voice said, and Stewart remembered that he was in public.  Talking to himself. “I think it looks like a flower.”

Turning his attention to the painting he was standing in front of, Stewart tilted his head a little to the side, trying to get a feel for how the lines would play from other angles.  “I initially want to say it’s a black hole, but that’s not quite it either.  Perhaps a duality?  Bright life of the flower, dark center of the universe sucking all that in?”

The girl raised both of her eyebrows at him and shrugged, unimpressed.  She looked young to be at a gallery, but there was an eccentricity to her outfit that suggested art student.  “Ugh, probably.  I liked it better when it was a flower.”

“Better appreciated without the symbolic analysis, eh?”  It was the kind of inane and pandering comment that had driven him nuts when his professors had said it, and yet in the face of this girl’s cold apathy it had plopped out of his mouth.  He felt suddenly very old.

“Better appreciated without all the  _masturbating._ ” She replied, then walked away in case he decided to keep talking to her.

“I deserved that.” Stewart agreed, running a hand over the back of his head.  He’d chopped all of his hair short a few years ago after it had become clear that emo bangs really weren’t ever coming back into fashion, and it still felt a little unnatural.  It had been far easier to avoid eye contact, for one thing.

That had always been one of the great things about art for Stewart-- how acceptable it was to throw yourself wholly into it and not surface for anyone.  He tried to do it now, to immerse himself in the painting before him, swirls of his world’s brightest Pink and Green and Yellow coalescing into petals that either fell into or bloomed out of a dark center, but the room was too quiet for that.  When the voices chattering had all stopped he didn’t know, but now it was the hush of a herd of deer freezing in a pair of headlights-- the stillness of danger.

Stewart looked around, confused, and followed the line of everyone’s eyes to the door.  A man was standing there, with silver hair and dark skin, who would look like a man that he knew.  Except that _that_ man wasn’t so thin, or so… there was no other word for it.  Happy.

Almost every picture he’d seen of Anish had shown him with a stern expression, an older (if not actually old) heavyset man posed sitting down in some modern designer’s idea of a chair.  This person had Anish’s wide nose and dark glasses, sure, but Stewart couldn’t believe it was him, even if the rest of the room seemed to.

When he recalled it later, it would seem like Anish had parted the crowd and walked with soft, soundless steps the barely touched the ground, but really his sneakers squeaked like anyone else’s on the linoleum.  Stewart didn’t really know what to do with this casual Anish, in a black t-shirt and Converse instead of the suit and loafers he’d come to expect.

“Stewart! What a surprise to see you.  Although I suppose I shouldn’t be, considering the artist’s obvious preference for your colors.”

The hand he offered Stewart to shake was dry and a little too warm, like he was used to being somewhere colder.  Up close he seemed to smell like black cherries, but that was probably just a hallucination from inhaling the scented fumes of his paint too many times.

“Anish.” Stewart said, and found he had nothing else to say.  All the other questions-- why are you talking to me, where have you been-- seemed too self-evident to give voice to.  Everyone was staring at them and whispering behind their hands to each other.

Anish laughed, the eye-crinkling kind instead the mocking kind, and Stewart shook his head, smiling a little from confusion.  They hadn’t really stopped shaking hands, but the momentum had died, their joined fingers locking as their arms swung loosely.

“Wouldn’t know you were real without this.” Stewart joked, nodding towards their hands.  He couldn’t let go, and couldn’t identify why.

“I’m surprised you recognize more than my middle finger,” Anish returned, smiling lopsidedly. “I showed it to you enough times… that glitteriest glitter was clever, really cut me up under my nail beds.  What I deserved I suppose.”

“Oh, no…” It withered as he said it, because that was why he’d done the glitter after the Pink, if he was really honest with himself.  “Well.  I mean you could have read the directions.”

“I know.” Anish agreed amiably. “As I said-- what I deserved.  I hope that’s all water under the bridge now.  Neither of us are still in the business anyways.”

“I’m business-adjacent.” Stewart defended, then realized he wasn’t under attack.  “Er-- What are you up to these days, if not art?”

“A lot of bike tours, mostly.” Anish patted his stomach, as if the change in his body surprised even him.  “Cycling around the countryside, visiting old friends, being in nature… it’s been wonderfully refreshing, creatively.  You should try it some time, if you’re feeling uninspired.”

“Oh, I have this favorite tree in Bournemouth…” Stewart bit the inside of his mouth to stop himself from talking, smiling painfully instead.  “These days my work is more in the production side of things, designing new colors, that sort of thing.”

“It’ll feed the body.” Anish agreed. “But what about your soul?”

“You know I was never very good.” Stewart didn’t think he’d ever admitted that, even to himself. “I mean, sure, I got gallery openings, but none of us are ever going to be Warhol.  Or I’m not.”

“And all I did was pile up huge ball bearings, or paint some big plastic tube red.” Anish shrugged, looking unbothered.  “There’s nothing new under the sun, no one can really be original.  I can only create art that I like, that I enjoy experiencing.”

“I guess.” Stewart blew out a breath to push hair that he no longer had out of his eyes.  “You’ve gotten strangely zen.”

“It’s the endorphins from exercising.” Anish gave Stewart another crinkled-eyes smile.  “I was wound pretty tight back then.  I hope you can forgive me.”

“I missed you,” Stewart replied, because ‘yes’ seemed inadequate.

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. I actually looked up both of the artists' works, so anything described in this story is probably something they have really created. They are both so very Post Modern, and I think that postmodernism is garbage, so there you go. Your millage on it may vary.


End file.
